


District Twelve (The Girl with the Boy)

by aimmyarrowshigh



Series: Five Places Cinna Came From [4]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Blackmail, District 12, Domestic, Domestic Violence, F/M, Implied Child Abuse, Miscarriage, Pre-Canon, Pregnant Sex, Teen Pregnancy, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 14:56:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/pseuds/aimmyarrowshigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Because the Capitol is a very bad place, Peeta,” Cinder said, exhaustion breaking his voice. “Panem is made of lies.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	District Twelve (The Girl with the Boy)

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings** : Spoilers for _The Hunger Games_ and _Catching Fire_. Violence, sexual content, bad language, character death, physical/verbal/emotional domestic abuse, pregnancy loss, familial death. All of the usual feel-good content of Collins' _Hunger Games_ world!  
>  **Major trigger warnings:** Physical/verbal/emotional domestic abuse, pregnancy loss.  
>  **Disclaimer** : I only own the original characters and concepts. All settings and proprietary language are owned by the author of the work from which this is derived.
> 
> ORIGINALLY POSTED [HERE](http://aimmyarrowshigh.livejournal.com/56600.html) on 1 May 2011.

** Five Places Cinna Came From  
 _District Twelve: The Girl with the Boy_ **

“Cinna!”

Cinder grinned as he caught the five-year-old up in a bear hug and lifted him off the ground, tossing him once and laughing. Cinder set him down on the glass counter and handed him one of the dusty toffees from behind the register. 

“How was your first day of school, Peeta?” 

Peeta Mellark stuck the candy in his mouth, frowned, took it out, and dusted it off on his sleeve before sucking on it again. His blue eyes were wide and serious as he stared up at Cinder. “I met the girl I’m going to marry.”

Cinder laughed. “Oh, really? Who is it? Delly Cartwright? Madge Undersee? Louise Groverton?”

Peeta shook his head. “No, I know all them already, silly.” He sighed. No, he _swooned_. “Her name is Katniss Everdeen.” Then he looked over his shoulder and beckoned Cinder closer. He cupped his toffee-sticky fingers over Cinder’s ear and whispered, “She’s from the Seam.”

Cinder looked down at Peeta. “Why the secrecy?”

Peeta looked embarrassed and knocked his heels against the glass case. “Well… my mother says that the Seam is bad.”

Cinder frowned. “The Seam isn’t bad, Peeta. You know Magdalen is from the Seam, too, right?”

Peeta looked down at his knees. “Yes. But my mother and Barm had a big fight about it last night. My mother says that Magdalen is just trying to get your money like all the other Seam girls. Barm said – ” Peeta cut off and looked troubled. “Barm said that it isn’t Magdalen’s fault that my dad doesn’t love my mother enough, and that me and him and Lavash are going to your wedding anyway, and she shouldn’t be so bitter.”

Cinder felt his eyebrows somewhere in the vicinity of his hairline. “Oh?”

“Yes,” Peeta confirmed. “And then I said that I think Magdalen is pretty, and that I thought she loved you a lot and it didn’t matter that you have more money, because you told me that you love her a lot, and then my mother–” Peeta stopped and blushed. “I mean, and then I ran into the door.” 

Cinder felt the familiar rush of anger. “Where this time, Peeta?”

Peeta looked abashed and swallowed the toffee. He rolled up his sleeve and showed Cinder the five-fingered bruise, festering dark brown and greenish gold. “I just ran into the door.”

“Uh-huh,” Cinder said. “You ought to be more careful, Peeta. If you keep running into doors, one of these days, you’ll fall right out of the house.”

Peeta bit his lip and nodded. “I know. I’m just clumsy, I guess.”

Cinder stooped down to look Peeta in the eyes. “You can learn to be less clumsy, Peeta. Every person needs to hear things said in a different way. And that’s not lying, okay, it’s just being careful. Like… when Mayor Undersee comes in, and he wants to buy a suit, can I tell him that I need to make his pants wider because he’s so tall and chunky?”

Peeta laughed. “No!”

Cinder grinned back. “No! So what do I say?”

Peeta’s mouth twitched. “Hmmm. You could say… that… he should get a bigger sized pair, and you’d be happy to hem them?”

Cinder nodded. “Right. So when your mom says she hates people from the Seam and you disagree, what can you say next time?”

Peeta shook his head. “Nothing?”

Cinder patted Peeta’s shoulder and nodded. “Right.”

“I do disagree, though,” Peeta said earnestly. “And I do think Magdalen’s really pretty. But I don’t understand how you’re getting married. You’re not a grown-up.”

The bell on the door of the tailor’s shop chimed, soft and ringing, and Cinder looked up with a thousand-watt smile. “Why don’t you ask Magdalen?”

Magdalen Glass was a wiry girl, limbs cut lean without an ounce of fat and with slight, hard swells of muscle that she would tease were more impressive than Cinder’s (and she was right). She had smooth skin the color of the undersides of autumn leaves and piercing gray eyes that were always laughing. She wore her dark curtain of Seam hair in a long braid that was so heavy it could leave bruises if it hit someone wrong, and Cinder loved to unplait it at the end of the day and slip his fingers through her curls. 

Peeta took a flying leap off the countertop and ran for her. “Magdalen!” He threw his arms around her waist and then pulled back. He stared at her at eye-level for a long moment before looking up to her face. “You should buy some bigger pants, and then have Cinna hem them.”

Magdalen tilted her head. “What?”

“Nothing,” Cinder said, shaking his head. He kissed her quickly as Peeta giggled. “How are you feeling?” He nosed her ear. “And how is he?” 

“I’m fine, just usual,” Magdalen said. “And _she_ is fine, too. Is it time for Peeta’s art lessons? Should I come back later?”

“Stay, stay!” urged Peeta. “You can paint, too.” He wrapped his hand around Magdalen’s fingers. “Come on!”

Magdalen looked over to Cinder. “Do you mind if I stay?”

Cinder shook his head. “No… I can always use my muse.”

“What’s a muse?” Peeta asked. “Is it like a wife?”

“No,” Magdalen said, ruffling Peeta’s hair. “A muse is someone who inspires you.”

“What’s inspires?”

“It means that when you look at them, you see everything that’s beautiful in the world and none of the bad things,” Cinder said, putting his hand on the small of Magdalen’s back as he led them to the workroom off the side of the tailor’s showroom, where two easels were set up – one big one, for Cinder, and a little one for Peeta. “A muse is the person who makes you feel like you can always be better.”

Peeta smiled. “I met my muse today, then, too!” He swooned again, sighing dramatically and flopping onto the little stool in front of his easel. “Magdalen, she’s from the Seam, too! Do you know her? Her name is Katniss Everdeen. Are all muses from the Seam?”

“No, not all muses are from the Seam,” Magdalen laughed, settling down on the platform in front of the easels. “And yes, I know _of_ Katniss, but I don’t know her. Her mom is the Healer, so just about everyone in the Seam knows her. I saw her today, actually, just a little while ago.”

Peeta frowned and peeked out around his canvas. “Are you sick?”

Magdalen smiled and locked eyes with Cinder, who nodded. “No, I’m not sick.”

“Peeta?” asked Cinder, “Remember how you asked why Magdalen and I are getting married even though we aren’t grown-ups?” 

Peeta nodded. His paintbrush dripped with bright rust-orange. 

“Well,” Magdalen said, “Cinder and I… are having a baby.”

“But you aren’t married yet,” Peeta said, swirling his paintbrush in the water. “So how can you be having a baby?”

“Well,” Cinder said carefully, “Sometimes… it… just… happens that way.”

“But a wedding is where babies come from,” Peeta said, sticking the paintbrush into the palette of yellow, “You go to the Justice Building, and you sign a paper for the Capitol, and they hand you a baby. And then you’re married.”

Magdalen and Cinder exchanged looks over the top of Cinder’s canvas. 

“That’s – that’s not right, Peeta,” Magdalen said. 

“Well, that’s what Barm said at the last Reaping,” Peeta shrugged. “He said the only way to get out of a Reaping is to get a baby and the Capitol only gives you a baby if you have a marriage. So you have to have a marriage to get out of Reaping. That’s why he and Lavash have to put in their names and stand in the pen. And that’s why I’m going to have to stand in the pen, unless I can get Katniss to marry me and we get a baby.” He frowned. “But I didn’t think they gave them to kids.” 

“Well, we’re not really ‘kids,’ Peeta,” said Cinder, giving Magdalen a bald look that read loud and clear across his green eyes: _How did this topic come up and what, WHAT, do we tell the five-year-old blabbermouth?_

Peeta chuckled and painted a long stripe across his paper. “You’re kids if you’re in the Reaping. That’s the point.”

“What are you painting, Peeta?” asked Magdalen quickly, changing the subject. The light from the window caught her dark hair and made it shine six shades of blue and soft maroon, and Cinna slashed paint across the canvas in staccato dabs to catch its radiance. 

“My muse,” Peeta said absently, drawing the brush over his little canvas in a painstaking circle. He caught his tongue between his teeth as he filled it in. “She’s standing inside the sun and singing a song and the birds are all listening to her. That’s what happened at school today.”

“She stood inside the sun?” asked Magdalen. “How did that happen?”

“She was standing up at the assembly and the sun came through the window and lit her up and she was in it,” Peeta explained as though Magdalen were a little slow. “And she sang the Anthem. And guess what?”

“What?” Magdalen asked, a little smile on her face. Peeta rinsed his brush and globbed on some bright red. 

“My dad said that he used to be in love with her mom,” said Peeta. “And then she ran away with a coal miner and my dad had to marry my mother.”

Cinder kept painting, shading a dusk-blue into Magdalen’s gray eyes. Everyone knew that story.

“Peeta, your dad loves your mom and you and Lavash and Barm very much,” Magdalen said gently. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yup,” Peeta said, untroubled. He painted a little more and wiped his nose, smudging it with yellow. “But my mother doesn’t.”

“Yes, she does, Peeta. All mothers love their babies,” assured Magdalen, sharing a smile with Cinder around the side of his canvas. Cinder thickened the curve of Magdalen’s lip in his painting, trying to match the sweet heart-shaped bow in the middle.

“Well, I was a mistake,” Peeta said, matter-of-fact. “And my dad doesn’t earn enough money to feed me. So we gotta take more tesserae. And Barm and Lavash are useful, so I gotta earn my keep.”

“Did she say that to you, Peeta?” Cinder asked, aghast, settling down his brush.

Peeta nodded and scratched his nose again, staining his sleeve. “Do you have more candy?”

Cinder nodded and stood, getting another dusty toffee from beneath the register. “Peeta, you don’t need to be anything other than who you are. You’re wonderful with clearing the tables and working the register and you can already bake well enough to put me _or_ Magdalen to shame, so you’re just as useful as Barm and Lavash, okay? Just be Peeta.”

Peeta dipped the toffee into his rinsing water and stuck it in his mouth. He nodded and squinted at his canvas, squeezing a little green onto his palette. 

The sun started to sink outside the windows, flooding the back room of the tailor shop with caramel light and making everything glow softly, the dust catching and reflecting the light. Cinder abandoned his canvas and grabbed his sketchbook, trying to capture all the angles and shapes of the shadows before they melted – the pale light of Peeta’s hair, the indulgent smirk on Magdalen’s mouth as she watched his artistic furor take over, the headless curvature of his ancient dressmaking forms casting long, ghost-story lines across the cracked wooden floor.

The tailor shop was home, and always had been. Until Cinder was fourteen, his family – just he, his mother, and his father – had lived upstairs. But after his father died, Cinder and his mother moved into the spare bedroom of his grandmother’s house, just a few streets away. Cinder moved back into the little loft above the shop a few months later, going over to his grandmother’s house only for meals and to deliver rations. 

That first year, he had needed to take out a tessera, and it was the singularly most terrifying, and humiliating, experience of his life to know that he was signing a bit of his soul away just for some grain and oil.

After he’d finished cleaning up the messes of his father, the tailor shop flourished as it never had. With only his mother to support, Cinder never needed to take tesserae again. There were a few other merchant kids who didn’t – the undertaker’s children had never needed them; the Peacekeepers’ children were exempt – but it set Cinder apart at school. It was more than having money. It was like having an extra shot at life that no one else was privy to, not even Barm, and the bakery did more business in a day than any of the other shops combined. Except maybe The Hob, but that didn’t count.

Magdalen had four younger siblings and a father who’d lost a leg, six fingers, and an eye to a mine collapse. She had more tesserae than most.

When the shadows had retreated to the corners and the sky outside the window glowed red, Barm Mellark let himself into the shop and bent to kiss Magdalen’s cheek.

“How are you today, little missus?” he asked, an easy, open smile on his face as always. He was stocky and tall and had the sort of face that was handsome once you got to know him. 

Barm made a strange picture with Cinder, who was slender and dark-haired and the kind of good-looking that made girls (and housewives) in the street stop to point and giggle and turn their heads to hide their blush, but the two were thick as thieves. 

“I’m doing fine, Barmbrack,” Magdalen said, with a pat to his cheek. “Your brother was telling me about how he met his future wife today.”

“Ah, yes,” said Barm. “The Everdeen girl.” He looked down at Peeta. “So I heard… fifty-six times between picking him up at the school and getting him here.”

Peeta scowled. “Not fifty-six. And you weren’t _listening_.”

“I was listening, I was listening,” laughed Barm. “C’mon, Peeta,” said Barm, scooping him up. “Let’s go home. You’ve gotta set the table tonight. And remember what happened last time – ”

“Forks go on the left,” Peeta said seriously, holding up his hands to check which was left. Cinder noticed, for the first time, the row of four little red scabs on the back of Peeta’s left hand. 

“Right,” said Barm, shouldering open the tailor shop door. “Seeya, Cinder. Magdalen.”

Magdalen waved. “Bye, Barm. Good-bye, Peeta.”

“Bye, Magdalen!” Peeta called, waving. “Barm?” Peeta asked thoughtfully as he was carried out of the tailor shop, “Where do babies really come from?” 

Cinder tossed his head back and laughed as he locked the doors, a blinding stripe of yellow sunlight shining through the high windows. “Oh, Barm is going to _kill us_ for that one.”

Magdalen grinned back and shook her head, coming over to wrap her arms around Cinder’s waist. “You, maybe. So he can step in and take your place.”

Cinder turned and nuzzled her hair. “Not a chance.” He reached behind him and laid a hand over Magdalen’s hip. “So what did Mrs. Everdeen say?”

“Nothing new,” Magdalen said. “Just asked how I’m feeling, took my weight. She said I should be eating more.”

“We’ll talk to Farll,” Cinder promised. “Maybe we can make a trade for a deal on bread.”

“I don’t even know _how_ to eat more.” Magdalen half-laughed. “Greasy Sae’s been giving me soupbowls the size of my head.”

Cinder turned around in her embrace so he could kiss her forehead and hold her close. “I’ll help you work up an appetite.” 

Magdalen shoved his arm. “Yeah, you’ve done enough of that.”

“Speaking of, I’ve been thinking of names,” Cinder said, running his nose along Magdalen’s ear. 

“Oh, really?” Magdalen asked, smiling, catching his wandering hands and settling them on her hips. “Like what?”

“Well, I was thinking… maybe… Adrian,” Cinder suggested, dropping down into one of the squashy armchairs in the showroom and pulling Magdalen down into his lap. “Or Quince?”

“Cripes,” Magdalen laughed, pushing his face away. “Those are such merchy names.”

“Oh, what do you want to call him? Bit? Cleat?” Cinder laughed, tickling her sides. “Shaft?”

“You’re going to be so embarrassed when she’s a girl,” Magdalen said smugly. “And I wouldn’t be opposed to naming her Brattice, no.”

Cinder wrinkled his nose as he pulled aside the collar stand of her loose blouse, baring her shoulder. “That’s a terrible name for a boy.”

Magdalen rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible.” Then she sighed. “Adit and Tipple don’t want to come to the wedding,” Magdalen said sadly, snuggling back against Cinder’s chest. 

“I didn’t think they hated me _that_ much,” Cinder said, wrapping his arms around her and tipping his face forward to kiss the brown curve of her shoulder. “Why not?”

“You know why not,” Magdalen sighed. Cinder unwound the ties from her hair and combed his fingers through the long strands. “They hate coming to the merchant quarters. And they think I’m betraying everyone for moving out here.”

“Well, what do they want you to do?” Cinder asked. “I have to keep the shop, and you’re – you’re _good_ at upholstery, pipit. And… you’re better than working in the mines. It’s not safe, and you’re too important.”

“That’s just it,” Magdalen said, dropping her head to Cinder’s shoulder. “I’m not better than the mines. At least, not more than Adit or Tipple or anyone. But I’m getting out. You’re not supposed to make it out of the Seam.”

Cinder kissed the side of Magdalen’s face. “Well… I guess we’re just lucky.” He pulled back. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Magdalen raised an eyebrow. 

“Stand up,” Cinder said, grinning so hard his face hurt. Magdalen stood and Cinder scooted around her to the revolving rack of clothes to be pressed and delivered. 

“You didn’t – ” Magdalen gasped, her hands coming up to cup her face.

Cinder pulled a garment bag from the rack. “I made you a wedding gown.”

He smiled at her like he had when he was fifteen and stumbling over his words as she smirked knowingly at him back behind the schoolhouse, both of them carrying paintbrushes and empty glass jars. 

“I can’t believe you,” Magdalen whispered, one hand covering her mouth. “Cinna…”

“I wanted to,” Cinder said, coming over and kissing her soundly on the mouth. “I never get to design things how I want, so it was a little selfish, anyway. But I just thought… pipit, maybe we’re not getting married under the most ideal – you know, circumstances, in the world, with – with the Reaping coming up and everything, and… I can’t change Panem, but I want to try to make it better for you.”

Magdalen kissed him. “I don’t need anything except you, you know.”

Cinder smiled. “Do you want to see the dress?”

Magdalen bit her lip. “I don’t know… I heard it’s bad luck for the groom to see the dress before the wedding.”

“I don’t think that counts if the groom designed it,” Cinder said loftily. He laughed. “Cripes, we really are doing this entire wedding thing backwards, aren’t we?” 

Magdalen smiled knowingly and unzipped the garment bag, revealing a stripe of soft white linen and light feathers. “Do you really mind?”

Magdalen squeaked as Cinder swooped her up and dipped her low like a fancy Capitol pre-show dancer, kissing her soundly. His ran his hand over her stomach, spanning the soft skin beneath her plain canvas tunic. 

“No,” he said, joy prickling through his every bone like a hearthfire. “I wouldn’t change it for the world.” He pulled her upright and held her close. “Now look at your dress so we can go eat.”

↘

“Wake up, pops!”

Cinder raised his head blearily as Barm Mellark threw open the curtains and let early-morning sunshine stream into the little loft above the tailor shop. 

“How did you get in?” he asked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “What time is it?”

“The bride let me in,” Barm explained, tutting around in the corners like a crotchety housewife, batting down a few cobwebs. “And you’ve only got an hour until the toasting, so you should probably put on some pants. Peeta’s downstairs with the bread and the cake, telling Magdalen all about how yesterday, Katniss _didn’t_ talk to him, and it was _magical_ and he _loves_ her.”

“Oh, let him think so,” Cinder yawned. “He’ll grow out of it soon enough.” He paused. “Is anyone else here?” 

Barm shook his head sadly. “That old woman is here with the food, but… other than that, no.” He tossed Cinder a pressed white shirt and Cinder caught it, frowning at the creases. “I don’t think think they’re coming, man. Maybe her family, but… the word around school this week was pretty grim.”

Cinder pulled on the shirt. “She’s going to be so upset.”

Barm patted his shoulder. “She won’t. You two’ve got me and Lavash and Peeta and your mom and her family and that old woman with the soup. It’ll be fine.”

The loft door opened and Magdalen stuck her head in. Peeta’s little blond head poked out around the door, too, in the vicinity of her knees.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” Magdalen said. “It’s almost time to go.”

“It’s almost time to go,” echoed Peeta, wagging a finger at Cinder sternly. Then he looked up at Magdalen. “Where are we going again?”

Magdalen smiled down at him. “Cinna and I are having our toasting today.”

“Oh, right,” Peeta said. “What’s a toasting? Isn’t that just breakfast? Do we get to eat that cake for breakfast? It’s walnut cake. I helped.”

“The toasting is part of getting married, Peeta, remember?” Magdalen asked, smoothing Peeta’s messy hair. “Cinder and I each hold a slice of bread over the fire to toast them, and then we feed them to each other. Remember?”

“Oh, right,” Peeta said sagely, nodding. “Because married people help each other. And that’s why my father should earn more money, dammit.”

“Peeta!” Magdalen’s jaw dropped. “Don’t say that word.”

“My mother says it all the time,” Peeta said, smiling like the cat that got the canary. “And I heard Barm say it yesterday, and Lavash already said it four times today, and one time I heard _you_ say it and then _Cinna_ said – ”

“Okay, okay,” Cinder said, standing up and buckling his best pair of black linen pants. “It doesn’t matter what I said. Peeta, don’t say ‘dammit.’ And you’re in charge of carrying the bread, okay? Barm, go get the cake and see if Sae needs help with the food. Pipit, do you need help getting into your dress?”

“Aye-aye,” said Barm, opening the door and putting a guiding hand to the back of Peeta’s head. “C’mon, Peeta.”

Magdalen stepped around the Mellark brothers and into the sun-soaked little loft: kitchen along one wall, wardrobe taking up most of another, the bed a third, and the fourth leading off to the tiny bathroom. The ceiling was low and slanted and the windows high, casting oddly shaped shadows over the cramped space. A half-clothed dressform stood eerily in the corner, layers of paint-splashed lace rippling its frame. Magdalen’s bow and quiver of arrows shared space with Cinder’s paintbrushes and jars and canvas-stretcher in the corner. The few books they’d acquired over their years in school were stacked on the floor.

“Happy toasting day, pipit,” murmured Cinder, sliding his hands into her hair. “Are you nervous?”

Magdalen shook her head, eyes shining. “No. Are you?”

Cinder kissed her once, softly. “No. Is everything downstairs ready to go?”

Magdalen nodded, but her smile fell. “Tipple and Adit really aren’t coming. I really thought they would – ” She shook her head. “I should have known. Nothing in Panem ever changes.”

“Sure it does,” Cinder said, tucking a strand of her long hair behind her ear. “For example, today, your name changes from Magdalen Glass to Magdalen Foquismo.”

She grinned. “And you change from the most eligible bachelor in District Twelve to a married man shackled by this big, fat ball and chain.”

Cinder scoffed. “You aren’t fat. You’re radiant.”

“Let’s see if you’re still saying that a few months from now,” grumbled Magdalen. “All right, let’s squeeze me into this dress.” She looked wistful. “It’s a beautiful dress, Cinna. I don’t think I’ll ever get to wear something this lovely again.” 

Cinder unbuttoned the long row of simple closures down the back of Magdalen’s plain canvas dress, the way he had a thousand times before. “I’m glad you like it, pipit.” He kissed her shoulder softly.

It may not have been anywhere near as fine as the dresses in the Capitol or even the wealthier Districts, but linen was scarce in Twelve and the crisp softness of the white fabric seemed to whisper as it slid up Magdalen’s body. Cinder guided her arms through the long, flowing sleeves and began to fasten the tiny buttons up her back.

“This is so much fabric,” Magdalen whispered, sounding amazed and worried as she fingered the cape of material at her wrists. “There’s no way this was cheap, Cinna. There has to be an extra yard here, at least.”

He kissed the side of her face. “It’s okay. I promise. You deserve this dress.”

Magdalen smiled shyly and ran her hands over the sheathing of feathers trailing down the long skirt and the complicated rûching around her waist, soft and expanding material to let her breathe. “Where did you get all the feathers?” She feigned a gasp. “Are you seeing another poacher behind my back?”

Cinna laughed and finished buttoning her dress, patting her rear end appreciatively. “That little kid, Hargoode, Hawthorne, something. He skins before he sells, gets twice the profits. Smart for being so little. I think Farll’s getting the meat, but he saved the feathers for me for months.” 

Magdalen nodded. “It’s Hawthorne. Gale. He is good – I taught him snares myself, but he’s a better haggler than I am. Probably ‘cause he’s cute. Maybe I should bring Peeta along and have him haggle for me.”

“I think he’s too stubborn,” Cinder laughed. He smoothed his hands over the shoulders of the white gown, wondering whether he shouldn’t have pleated the fan of the sleeves. “I wish I could have gotten you silk. Or velvet.”

“Stop,” Magdalen said decisively. “The dress is already more than I expected.” There was a crash from downstairs. “And that’ll be Peeta… and possibly the cake. We should probably go.”

Cinder smiled and kissed her. He held her close by the hips and bit his lip. “That was the last kiss before you’re my wife.”

Magdalen smirked and kissed him, quick, before swirling around in her feathered white dress to sweep out the door. “No. That was. Now come on, before Barm kills Peeta or vice-versa or Greasy Sae kills them both.”

None of Magdalen’s Seam friends – not Tipple Colliery or Adit Shumake or even the little Hawthorne boy she’d taught snares – ever showed up, but three Mellark brothers could make enough noise and merriment to make up for a crowd. Lavash and one of Magdalen’s sisters carried Magdalen’s train for her as they walked the two streets to the Justice Building, and Peeta and the littlest sisters chattered away happily, Peeta proudly carrying the long loaf of toasting bread over his shoulder. 

The Justice Building was as cold and unforgiving an experience as ever – uninterested and judgmental Capitol clerk raising an eyebrow at Magdalen’s belly in scorn; Peeta slipping on the shining, slick floor and starting to cry; endless forms with the Seal of the Capitol to initial and sign here, please, not there, here at the X. 

“Weren’t you in just a few weeks ago?” asked the clerk finally as Cinder put his hand over the small of Magdalen’s back and turned to go. 

Cinder nodded. “Declaration papers. We’re fully legal now.”

The clerk raised a painted eyebrow and started filing her nails into crescent moons. “The Capitol would appreciate all forms to be filed in the proper order according to protocol.”

Cinder frowned. “Well, we’ll just try harder to be married first next time.”

“See that you do.”

The toasting itself, back at Cinder’s grandmother’s house, was much nicer. Magdalen’s littlest sister sang a song (which Peeta proclaimed ‘not as good as Katniss’), and Cinder’s mother presented them with a beautiful ornate quilt and cried, and Barm handed them their slices of savory sour bread, and only sliced them too thin – making Magdalen’s piece crumble off into the fire – once before getting it just right. 

Greasy Sae and Peeta clapped and Peeta jumped up and down, and Cinder felt like his chest right crack down the middle with joy and swallow up all of Panem in his joy as he kissed Magdalen, tasting burnt crumbs on her lips.

↘

Cinder smiled and rubbed his hand over the tiny swell of Magdalen’s belly below the blankets.

“My last Reaping,” he said with relish, “And then you won’t have to worry anymore.”

There was the tiniest stuttering gasp across the chasm of the pillow and Cinder raised his head blearily. Magdalen had sticky tracks from silent tears dripping down her face.

“We’ll always have to worry,” she whispered. “What if they choose me next year and you have to raise her – ”

“Him.”

“Her alone? Or – Cinna, we’re going to need tesserae. In twelve years, it could be her. _How_ did we think – ”

“Hey,” Cinder whispered, rolling over to lay above Magdalen, the crest of her belly just barely brushing his. It still gave him a thrill every time. “Pipit, this baby… if I need to cut off my own legs to feed you two then commission me a wheelchair. We will _never_ let this baby take out tesserae, okay? You and he and I are all going to be safe. I promise.”

He ducked down below the sheets and dappled kisses over the bump. He looked up at Magdalen’s teary face.

“I promise,” Cinder repeated, his lips brushing her skin. 

“But what about next year?” Magdalen asked, her light fingers pushing through Cinder’s brown hair.

He grinned and slid back up the length of her body. “Well… we’ll just have to make sure you’re exempt next year, too.”

“Oh, really?” Magdalen asked with a tight laugh as Cinder ran his hands along the insides of her thighs. “And how exactly will we do that?”

Cinder nibbled at her ear. “I thought that was obvious. More babies. We’re going to have lots and lots of babies, didn’t I tell you?”

“No,” laughed Magdalen, curling her arms around Cinder’s shoulders as he sank into her. She wound one lean, muscled leg up around his thighs, pulling him in deeper. “I was not aware of this lots-of-babies plan.”

“Oh? Well,” Cinder sighed, toying with the ends of her long hair, “I think we should have no more than six, but no less than four.”

“We can’t afford that.” Magdalen laughed and tucked her other leg up along her side, hands sliding down to Cinder’s waist to feel the muscles shift and flex under his pale skin.

“Sure we can,” Cinder said, wrapping a palm around the slats of the headboard. “We can do everything, pipit. It’s you and me. We’re the luckiest people in Panem.”

↘

“About time, lovebirds,” said Barm Mellark, slinging one arm around Cinder’s shoulders and the other around Magdalen’s waist. He kissed her cheek and asked, “I reckon you haven’t come to your senses about picking me over this loser?”

Magdalen patted his face. “Sorry, Barm. Not yet.”

“Shucks,” Barm whistled. “How are you feeling, dearie?”

“It’s the Reaping,” Magdalen said. “How is anyone feeling?”

Barm nodded, looking at the dusty road. He glanced back at his mother and little Peeta peeking out at Magdalen from behind the lamppost on the corner; Delly Cartwright, with her chubby belly, pulling at his sleeve. 

“I can volunteer for Cinder, if you want,” he said. “If he’s chosen. My dad’s still got Lavash and… Peeta’s getting older; he’s good at icing the cookies already. I can go. If you want.”

Magdalen kissed Barm’s scruffy blond cheek. “You Mellarks. You’re such bleeding hearts.” Then she shook her head. “I can’t let you do that, Barmbrack. I’d owe you for the rest of my life, and… well, you’d have to come home so we could pay that back.”

Barm nodded and detached from Cinder and Magdalen. “It’s almost time, I’m gonna go over.” He turned to the knot of small blond merchant children playing on the corner. “Peeta, if you make Tate eat that rock, you’re getting dish duty for three days!” 

Peeta froze and dropped both the rock and the collar of the undertaker’s son. His blue eyes were as round as dinnerplates. Barm sighed and went over to pick Peeta up and bring him over to their parents.

“But Tate called Magdalen a bad word!” Peeta insisted. “What’s a ‘hussy’?”

Cinder sighed and turned to Magdalen. “Are you okay? You can wait for me at home, if need to. It’s going to be all right.”

“Don’t be silly,” Magdalen said bravely, curling her fingers into the soft hair at the nape of Cinder’s neck. “I need to be here for you. Cinna,” she whispered, “If you do get – ”

“I won’t,” Cinder said firmly, resting his hands on her hips. “Pipit, I won’t. I only have eight slips. It won’t be me.” 

Magdalen nodded and wrapped her arms tightly around Cinder’s neck. “It better not be, mister. You’re kind of important to me.”

Cinder smiled back and kissed her softly. “You’re everything. It’ll be okay.” He kissed her again. “I love you.”

Magdalen pressed her lips just beneath Cinder’s jaw, right in the place that always made him weak in the knees. “I love you. Be safe.”

Cinder tugged the end of her braid. “I will. You be safe keeping Peeta out of trouble during the ceremony.”

Magdalen managed a smile. “I don’t know why you think he’s so much trouble. He’s perfectly good for me.”

Cinder cast her a wry look. “I wonder why that could be.”

“Cinder!” Barm called from the boys’ pen. “Come on, thirty seconds!”

Cinder kissed Magdalen one last time. “I’ll be back to you in less than hour, pipit.”

She smiled and squeezed his hand before moving to stand between Farll Mellark, Peeta sitting in the dirt at his feet drawing shapes with his sticky fingers, and Marjorae Undersee, shy little Madge hiding behind her legs. Mahra Mellark sneered at Magdalen, turning to whisper something to her husband that made him frown.

Cinder jogged over to Barm just before they closed off the pen.

“I’m gonna volunteer for you anyway, you know,” Barm muttered to Cinder. 

“Yeah, I know,” Cinder said back, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Thank you.”

Barm nodded. “It’s the only thing I could do.”

Cinder nodded back and stood, back straight and head high, while Mayor Undersee read out the annual script and introduced Effie Trinket, ageless as always and coiffed with a dark magenta pompadour this year. 

“Come on up here, Haymitch!” trilled Effie Trinket, leading the crowd in a sparse applause. Cinder twisted his mouth – Haymitch reminded him of his father, before he died; an unstable drunk with too much money, and rude, to boot. Haymitch shook his head out in the middle of the square and the momentum took him right down onto his ass.

Effie looked troubled. “Well, if you’re happy down there, friend.”

Haymitch Abernathy looked up at her drowsily. He mumbled something that might have been, “I’m not happy anywhere, _friend_ ” and passed out in a heap.

Cinder shook his head and caught Barm’s eye. “Here goes nothing,” he whispered.

“May the odds _ever_ be in your favor!” Her white grin twinkled out at the crowd. “So, in honor of our friend Haymitch, how about we choose a strapping young man first to help him on up here?”

Cinder looked across the square to Magdalen. The littlest Undersee, Madge, peeked out from behind Magdalen’s long skirt in a riot of white-blonde curls. Magdalen had one dark hand pressed to her stomach and the other clenched to her teeth. Her gray eyes locked to Cinder’s on instinct, and he smiled encouragingly. 

_I love you_ , he mouthed. 

Effie reached into the glass ball and Magdalen closed her eyes.

“Inby Haulage!” called Effie, and out in the crowd of adults a Seam woman so old she looked like a wrinkled tree trunk clutched at her chest and fell to her knees.

A ropy, stretched-looking boy no older than thirteen jostled his way out of the boys’ pen, his face a mask of white terror. 

“Grandma?” he cried, running a few steps towards the adults. Peacekeepers caught him into the arms and pulled him back, and without resistance – without any energy at all – he sagged between them and they let go. Inby Haulage stumbled once, then crept up towards the stage. His hands shook. His knees shook.

Cinder watched him. His pants were too short and badly let out, the old hems still full of pulling strings and holes. His jacket was moth-eaten in places – the lapel, the elbow, one of its false pockets. He had black hair falling over his gray eyes in waves, with sharp cheekbones and a cleft in his chin. He could be Magdalen’s brother. He could be what their son would look like at his age, and Cinder felt a little sick and shaky at the thought. 

Out in the crowd around the fallen woman, six or seven children too small for the Reaping clutched at her skirts and wailed. Cinder wondered how many tesserae Inby Haulage had taken to support his grandmother and all those children. He thought about Magdalen, with her thirty-five slips, and was glad to know she was out of the running this year. And next year, she would have no new tesserae. Their child would need no tesserae. 

And like that, a feeling of relief and lightness so absolute that Cinder felt drunk himself washed over him. He was eighteen years old, and his name had not been called. Magdalen already stood away from the girls’ pen, safe.

His nightmare of the Hunger Games was over.

“Congratulations, Inby!” simpered Effie Trinket, shaking the boy’s hand. She wiped it off conspicuously on the side of her primrose pink pantsuit after relinquishing it. She turned to the crowd of girls tucked together in their pen and smiled.

“And best for last, right? Ladies…” 

She reached into the glass ball and pulled out a slip.

“Magdalen Glass,” Effie Trinket called, looking at the pen. Silence fell over the square and Cinder was fairly certain that he had died, his heart stopped and turned to stone and fallen out onto the pavement. He couldn’t breathe.

That wasn’t right.

It wasn’t right.

“Magdalen Glass?” asked Effie again, looking down into the pen. “Which of you lovely girls is Magdalen Glass?”

Magdalen took three steps forward. The little Undersee girl attached herself to her mother’s leg, face buried in the white lace of her dress.

Magdalen opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Both hands splayed over her stomach, protecting herself, protecting Cinder’s baby, like the Games had already begun and the Capitol’s cameras and Effie’s smile were weapons.

“I’m Magdalen Foquismo,” Magdalen whispered, her voice a thin reed stretching over broken air. “I – I was Magdalen Glass. Until two weeks ago.”

The smile faltered on Effie’s face. She blinked once, twice, slowly as oil pouring, and for some reason looked to Haymitch on the ground. Haymitch Abernathy didn’t move. No one spoke. Magdalen swayed where she stood.

There was a deafening rush in Cinder’s ears. 

“I volunteer!” he cried, broken. “I volunteer, take me instead of her – ”

Effie Trinket couldn’t hold her sunny smile. “I’m sorry, Volunteers need to be of the same gender.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”

Cinder spun to the pen of girls. He grabbed the nearest arm. “Volunteer! For cripes’ sake, volunteer! Can’t you see she’s – she can’t go!”

Tipple Colliery sniffed. “She ain’t one of us anymore. Ask one of the merchant girls. They won’t go neither ‘cause all of you are chickenshit.”

Cinder’s face burned. “We’re not your enemies. Magdalen – Magdalen isn’t the one doing this to you, it’s not her or the merchants, it’s the Capitol!”

The girl’s gray eyes hardened. “Then ask the Capitol to take her place.” 

Cinder turned to the stage. “She’s exempt! Miss Trinket! She’s exempt! We’re married! She’s – she’s exempt!”

Effie Trinket blinked that slow blink again. “The Capitol does not err. If she were exempt, her name would not have been included. If we do not have any female volunteers, then Magdalen Glass, you must join us on the stage.” 

Magdalen took a few more halting steps forward. Behind her, Peeta broke out of the line of merchants and started running for her, but the baker scooped him up and shushed him against his wide, flour-dusted shoulder.

There was a distinct lack of silence as Mayor Undersee read the Treaty of Treason and Magdalen Foquismo, née Glass, shook hands with Inby Haulage. The soft-haired blonde Seam healer tended to Haulage’s fallen grandmother with her gray-eyed, solemn daughter staring close by; Peeta Mellark wailed into his father’s shoulder, the baker trying earnestly to hush him; Haymitch Abernathy grunted and started to push himself to his feet. 

But all Cinder could hear was the wet thump of his pulse in his ears, like wings beating the air.

↘

“How did this happen?” Cinder demanded, his hands shaking as he stared down at little Effie Trinket. “I thought expectant – expectant mothers were exempt under the bylaws! We’ve been to the doctors, it’s not like it was secret!” He lowered his voice to a dangerous hiss. “We filed the declaration papers for her pregnancy weeks ago.”

“But you never applied for a conception license,” Effie said sadly, reaching out to lay a hand on Cinder’s arm before thinking better of it. “Names are only taken out of the Reaping if they have proper licensure. You needed to file for the marriage license, the Declaration of Marriage, the conception license, and the Declaration of Conception, Cinder… and you didn’t.”

“Well, she’s obviously not fit for the Games, isn’t there any way that a substitute name can be drawn?” Cinder asked, despondent.

Effie shook her head. “No one volunteered, Cinder. I’m sorry. There’s nothing anyone can do. Except Magdalen. She can win. But that’s the only option.”

Cinder swallowed and braced his hand against the door, trying to keep gravity from slipping upside-down. “So that’s it? She just has to go?”

Effie’s eyes welled up and she sniffed. “There’s nothing I can do.” She paused. “You can go in and see her now. We’ll be leaving in one hour.”

Cinder blinked, feeling hollow, and turned the corner into Magdalen’s room. The couch and chairs were upholstered in gaudy purple velvet, and Magdalen curled up in one small corner of the sofa, pulling at a stray thread in the channelback.

“Pipit,” Cinder whispered, curving around her on the sofa. She didn’t say a word, just tucked her face into his shoulder.

Cinder pressed his face close to Magdalen’s, forehead to forehead and eyes locked on eyes. “Listen… you can win this. I know you can. You’re the toughest little bird I’ve ever seen, and you have the biggest motivation to make it out of there. All right?” He rested his hand against the curve of her stomach, trying not to think _this might be the last time I ever get to touch her, feel the baby_. “Everything I have, I’m turning it in at the resale shop, I’m going to spend everything we’ve got on Sponsoring you, okay? Anything – everything you need, okay? You’ll get it. I’m going to get it for you.”

“No,” Magdalen said. She laid her palm over Cinder’s cheek and he kissed her wrist, feeling the pulse beat under her skin. “Don’t. Please. You promised me we would never need tesserae.”

Hot tears prickled the corners of Cinder’s eyes. “You make sure you come home to me so I can prove I keep my promises.” He pulled Magdalen into his lap, her legs falling on either side of his and her arms around his neck and their child tucked up safe between them. “You come home. And you bring _her_ home. I know you can do it.” He kissed her hard. “My tough little birds.”

Effie Trinket knocked softly at the door. “We need to board the train now or we’re going to be late.”

Cinder’s jaw clenched and he wanted to shout and scream and rage; _well, for cripes’ sake, it would be the worst thing in the world if you were late to the slaughter, wouldn’t it!_ but he knew, without having to be told, that things would always be worse if they didn’t play by the letter of the Capitol’s laws. 

“I love you,” he said fiercely. “Don’t lose yourself in there. Come back to me, little pipit bird.”

Magdalen kissed his forehead and led his hand once more over her belly, her gray eyes alight. She smoothed her hand over Cinder’s cheek. 

“You’ll always be my Cinna, okay?” she whispered. “Whatever happens.”

Effie and Haymitch shushed Magdalen from the chamber and Cinder Foquismo stayed, sitting heavy on the gaudy furniture, trying to keep the scent of Magdalen’s olive oil soap and woodsmoke and wildflowers close, clinging to his clothes a little while longer. 

Peeta was a little sticky and a little floury and smelled like paste and burnt sugar when he crawled into Cinder’s lap and tucked his head under the bereft boy’s chin. It had already been three weeks since the Reaping had taken Magdalen away, and there had been no word from her in the Capitol, no sign of anything aside from the usual Capitol advertisements with “highlights” from previous Games. There was that girl from Four in the 10TH Games, catching her opponents on hooks; there was Haymitch and that axe flying up the cliff. 

“I miss Magdalen,” Peeta said sadly, staring at the small videoscreen in the corner. Cinder had never owned one in the loft, but Farll let him borrow the Mellarks’, since Peeta shouldn’t see the Games anyhow and Cinder couldn’t afford to miss a moment, in case it was the last –

“She’ll be back,” he said decisively, patting Peeta’s back. “She’ll come back.”

“I thought you said you were getting a baby with her,” Peeta said, not looking up. “And a baby gets you out of the Reaping.”

“Well, that’s – that’s what we thought, too,” Cinder said. “But the Capitol lied about how to get out of the Reaping. It’s not having a baby. It’s filing paperwork.”

“What’s filing?”

“Asking for President Snow’s permission,” Cinder said, his voice hard. “And I thought we had. But I guess he said no.”

“Why?”

Peeta’s blue eyes were clear and wide and full of worry. He really wanted to understand why they lived in a country that would allow for Magdalen Foquismo to be sent to fight for her life against other children, and where Inby Haulage’s last view of his home would be his grandmother’s heart stuttering out on the dusty dirt road, and where signatures on a form could mean more than the girl who danced with him at her wedding and who always brought his father squirrels for supper and who was loved so much.

“Because the Capitol is a very bad place, Peeta,” Cinder said, exhaustion breaking his voice. “Panem is made of lies.”

Peeta’s mouth twisted and he nodded very seriously. A long minute of silence, save the almost-muted prattling of Claudius Templesmith on the videoscreen, passed. 

“I don’t know what that means,” Peeta said finally. “What does it mean that Panem’s made of lies?”

Cinder sighed heavily and reached for the remote control, Opening Ceremonies about to start. 

“It means that everything the Capitol told you is true is really a lie, Peeta. Everything.” Peeta nodded and turned to look up at the processional on the videoscreen. “You remember that, Peeta.”

Inby Haulage and Magdalen were paraded around the stadium like cattle, stripped to their skin and patchily covered in black powder. Magdalen was stone-faced beneath her miner’s headlamp, but Inby had two flesh-colored tracks down his face where embarrassed tears had cut through the coal dust, reducing his chances for sponsors to nothing in one moment of human weakness.

Beside him, Magdalen’s eyes were fierce and challenging. Her biceps and triceps were as severely cut as any of the Careers’ and the lithe power of her legs was obvious.

But the only thing about her that anyone in Panem would pay any attention to was the softly rounded distention of her stomach, and Cinder had the sinking feeling that her stylists were betting on another District altogether.

Peeta Mellark sat quietly in Cinder’s lap, watching the circus of the Opening Ceremonies, taking in the interviews. An orange-skinned boy from District Six scared him and Cinder had to soothe Peeta with toffees. Inby Haulage was shaking too hard to get words out, but Magdalen was poised and smiling and warm and lovely and half the audience cheered themselves hoarse while the other half booed and threw things at the stage.

True to his promise, Cinder didn’t spend a dime of his own money on sponsorship. He noticed, quietly, that Barm seemed to be wearing the same outfit each day and was missing his best pair of boots, and he thanked his friend under his breath when Peeta was dropped off for the afternoon.

Barm just nodded, his lips tight, and patted Cinder’s back.

He couldn’t watch the Cornucopia. He spent the majority of the first day of the Games with his head in the toilet, little Peeta bringing him glasses of water and telling him, over and over, “Magdalen’s still alive. She’s running through the trees,” or “Magdalen’s still alive. Inby’s not, though, he’s really dead,” or “Magdalen’s still alive. They’d be showing her if she died. There’d be a cannon, right?” 

The evening finale of the Games, as always, pitted four seconds’ footage of each Tribute’s face – setting the tone of their role in the Games, pitting the audience and the Sponsors either for or against the gladiators in the Arena – against the soaring twinkle of the Panem anthem played to whatever tone best fit the evening. Tonight was soft, sweet flutes.

It was disconcerting.

The faces of the dead first – the girl from Five with half her face gone, the boy from Eleven with his black eyes glassy and staring at the dirt.

Inby Haulage, dark curls matted with blood.

Eight dead children in vary stages of dismemberment and panic – a few whole Districts already out of the Games; Three and Nine unlucky this year – and then the living.

The pair from One were shown curled together in their sleeping bag, shoulders naked and writhing and just a slip of nipple. The Capitol did so love when the Careers were of age and uncensored.

The girl from Two was sharpening her knife under the stars, gleaming steel biting white and black against the flickering flames of the Careers’ fire.

Beside her, the big Two boy with the dragon tattoo on his face dozed, looking untroubled with a sharp-toothed mace tucked close like a teddy bear.

The tiny boy from Four had his head cradled on his partner’s lap as he slept, and Cinder vaguely recalled that they were a brother and sister. Even as peaceful as the boy looked, the girl’s eyes were fierce and watchful, trained on the knife in Girl Two’s hands.

Out in the forest, the orange boy from District Six was still awake, stalking through the underbrush with his sword brandished like he would be just as happy to attack a tree as a person. Cinder didn’t trust the wild twitch in the boy’s sallow eyes or the crooked sharpness of his yellow teeth. Everyone knew District Six Tributes weren’t supposed to survive the Cornucopia, and he had. If he was lucid enough to make it into the forest, what else could he do?

The cameras panned up the length of a tall, gnarled tree covered in conks of fruited purple fungus – probably poisonous, possibly edible, but none of the Tributes would be silly enough to test it – and there was Magdalen, curled up with her bedroll around her shoulders like a shawl. She had a tiny smile on her face as her fingers lightly chased the tiny kicks across her belly, and that was the one moment in the Hunger Games that Cinder Foquismo cried. 

Magdalen was still early enough along that the cameras panned over her vomiting pathetically in the bushes as the lights rose on the Arena come morning.

“Come on, pipit,” Cinder murmured, staring at the screens in then square. “Get up.” 

Magdalen sat back on her heels and wiped her mouth on the heel of her hand. She heard something far-off that didn’t transmit over the cameras and jumped silently to her feet, more graceful than most of the Tributes even at their peak, and swung herself up into one of the huge, purple-fruiting trees, climbing high enough to make Cinder’s heart clench.

She crouched in the tree, silent and watchful, an arrow perched against the string of her bow, trained at the ground.

The Career pack came rumbling onto the screen, Boy Two and Girl One in the lead, mace and dagger clutched in battle position. Girl Two and Boy One ran backwards at their heels, on the lookout for an ambush, and just behind them, Girl Four held out her arms to help her little brother over a huge fallen log.

Boy Two spit in the leaves at his feet. “That fucking kid,” he muttered. “Useless.”

“She’s good, though,” argued his partner at his back. “And they have sponsors.”

“We have sponsors,” muttered back Boy Two. “I say we trim the fat.”

“You gonna do it?” asked Boy One. “She’s gonna go ballistic on whoever does.”

“Then I take her, too,” blustered Boy Two. “And we get a fucking feast in parachutes for dinner.”

Boy One raised an eyebrow. “Whatever you say, chief. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The siblings from Four jogged over and Cinder covered his eyes as the girl’s face fell into a grief-shocked white hole and her little brother’s brain splattered her shirt and arms and face when the mace came whipping around the side of his head.

Before Girl Four could even catch the headless body in its descent, an arrow whizzed down from the trees and slammed Boy Two in the chest, piercing in one side and out the other. He grabbed the shaft of the arrow, looking stunned, and fell back against the leaves.

“Let’s get outta here,” yelled Boy One, grabbing his partner’s sleeve. “Trim the fat.”

The pair from One and the lone girl left from Two ran off through the mottled green and eggplant underbrush while the girl from Four cradled the carcass that used to be her little brother.

Magdalen slipped down from the tree and yanked her arrow out of Boy Two’s lifeless chest. She turned and Girl Four stared up at her.

“Thanks,” Girl Four said thickly. “For – he would have appreciated it.” She sniffed. “Why did you do it? Now they know you can shoot.” 

Magdalen shook her head. One hand reflexively spread over her middle. “You’re the only other one in here playing for someone else.” She crouched down by the wrecked body and lifted his hand. “What was his name?”

“Atoll,” said Girl Four, smoothing what was left of her brother’s hair over what was left of his face. “We called him Tully.”

Magdalen smiled and set the boy’s limp hand in his lap. “That’s a good name.”

“I promised my mother he would come home,” the girl whispered. Overhead, the chugging blades of the hovercraft approached, drowning out their words to the cameras. Everything went out fuzzy for a second as the feed switched to a 6-second delay so their words could be captioned in white along the bottom of the screen.

 _Your mother will know how hard you tried_ , Magdalen said, straightening the dead boy’s collar. _The words of a promise are important, but the intent behind them is what a person’s really counting on._

The silver sling dropped down beside Tully’s body and Girl Four and Magdalen settled him inside as across the clearing, robotic arms scooped up Boy Two with no care and no circumstance.

The two girls watched as Tully’s body swung up towards the sky, swaying on the breeze. Boy Two’s sling followed, low and dark.

“I don’t wanna have to kill you,” Girl Four said, not looking at Magdalen. “And I don’t – I don’t want to break my promise, but I think you should be the one to go home.”

Magdalen pulled her quiver of arrows higher on her back. “I have my own promises to get back to. But I am sorry about your brother. Just… don’t let this change how you’re playing the game, okay? You were playing it honorably. For someone you loved. And you still are. You’re playing for your mother now, right? And for Tully.”

Girl Four looked over to Magdalen with tears running down her cheeks but a wry smile on her face. “You know, I don’t know how someone as smart as you got knocked up.”

Magdalen laughed under her breath. “Neither do I. But I think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” 

The District Four girl snorted. “To each their own.” She looked over her shoulder and unsheathed her dagger, already edging away towards the dark of the jungle. “May the odds _evah_ be in your fayvah!” 

Magdalen’s lips twitched and shouldered her bow. “Play well for your brother.”

The girl ran off and the cameras split again, an overhead sweeping arc following Girl Four through the jungle, Claudius Templesmith interviewing a Gamemaker about the mutts for this year’s Games in a voiceover, and Magdalen’s wistful smile as she wiped Tully’s blood off her hands and started climbing another tree, ready to wait out the afternoon.

They didn’t show Magdalen again until dinnertime. The Career pack massacred Ten sometime between high noon and the first lavender fade of twilight, and Cinder kept one eye on the screen and the other on Peeta, painting in the corner with his little canvas, instructed firmly by Barm _not to look_. Somewhere far off in the forest, a surprise cannon sounded, Boy Eleven dead, and the orange-skinned boy from Six grinned horribly from ear to ear.

The Gamemakers and Templesmith and the District Six mentors were discussing his silent and savage attack and how there hadn’t been a Victor from Six in twenty years when the parachute fell.

Barm had just arrived to pick up Peeta, but when Cinder turned, he shook his head.

“That’s not from me,” he said. “I dunno who.”

Magdalen smiled gratefully, snatching the silver out of the sky and holding it close, scanning the ground and nearby treetops for Careers who might have noticed the falling feast. She settled back into her tree, propped the parachute on her belly, and untied the wrapper.

 _Fish_. Beautiful sunset-pink, faintly marbled fish as large as a wild turkey leg, still steaming inside the reflective packaging and dusted with little orange eggs and green herbs.

They didn’t have fish like that in Twelve. Trout, sure. A few ugly catfish if you knew how to catch them. Crappies, maybe mullets if you were particularly good with a net.

But huge, beautiful fish like that – 

“She got a Sponsorship from _Four_ ,” said Barm, sounding dazed. “I didn’t even know you could Sponsor someone else’s Tribute.”

“Maybe it’s a trick,” Peeta said nervously. “Maybe it’s poison.”

“Can’t send poison in a parachute, Peeta,” said Cinder, a low crackling burn warming his ribs as he watched Magdalen’s gray eyes take in the unprecedented, rich, once-in-her-lifetime gift. “Only good things.”

“But you said everything is a lie,” Peeta said, burying his face in the side of Barm’s leg.

The burn in Cinder’s chest blazed to a roar as Magdalen gobbled up the swordfish steak with her fingers. That night, she had to kill a chimera mutt that slithered up her tree on its snake body, purplish venom coating its lion teeth. Once the thing was dead and Magdalen very much still alive, radiant with the fight and blowing her hair out of her face like she’d done nothing more taxing than take out a skinny Twelve squirrel, Claudius Templesmith announced that the official tally for the day held that they were down to the final eight Tributes.

Cinder would be interviewed in the morning.

↘

Cinder took a deep breath and focused on keeping his hands still and arms straight at his sides. He would be the face of Magdalen’s support base and strength, his words would influence sponsors and former Victors and, maybe, even the way the mentors communicated with their Tributes in the Arena that Magdalen was a force to be reckoned with.

“Cinder, what were your feelings when Magdalen was chosen at the Reaping?” Caesar asked, smiling an open, sympathetic white crease across his face.

Cinder chose his words carefully. “I was very shocked. I had filed what I was told were all of the necessary forms for the Capitol to remove her name from inclusion this year, so you can imagine my dismay at being informed too late that there were extraneous papers that no one had mentioned.”

Caesar nodded. “It must have been surprising to Magdalen as well, I would imagine. How do you think she is handling the Arena?”

“She’s a strong competitor,” Cinder said decisively. “She’s strong, she’s fast, she’s very, very smart… and she has the most at stake. I know Magdalen has what it takes to win.”

“If she were to win, would you celebrate that victory by marrying her?”

Cinder felt his brow crease. “We are married. _When_ she wins, I suspect we’ll be fairly busy getting ready for the baby’s arrival, and that would be cause for celebration enough for us and our families and friends.”

Caesar grinned at him again, a clown put upon by the Capitol to poke at District dwellers like documentary subjects. “What is a celebration like here in District Twelve? Is is like the carnivals we see every year on the Victory Tour?”

Cinder shrugged. “It’s different for everyone, same as anywhere else, I’d guess. Neither Magdalen nor I are all that flashy, so we’ll probably celebrate the baby with a small naming ceremony. Our best friend is the son of the bakery owner, so I’d guess we’d have a cake.”

“Ah, yes, I understand that you’re one of the wealthier citizens of District Twelve,” Caesar said. “And that Magdalen’s family are some of the poorest. What role did that play in your relationship?”

“None.” Cinder frowned. “We went to school together and both excelled in mathematics and the arts. She’s beautiful. She’s funny. And like I said, she’s wickedly smart. That’s all that mattered to me when I fell in love with her.”

Caesar cupped his hands to his jaw. “Young love! That is something we see so rarely in the Hunger Games, but of course, your situation _is_ very unusual. Now, confidentially, what do you think you’ll do if she doesn’t win?”

Cinder blinked twice. “I can’t think about that. Everything that matters to me in the world is in the Arena right now. I have to think she’s going to come home, and I believe she will.”

“Well,” Caesar Flickerman said, “Even if she doesn’t make it, at least you had a few months of happiness together. That’s better than nothing at all, isn’t it?”

Cinder looked up with blazing eyes. “Yeah. Maybe I’d think so too if it weren’t for the baby.” 

When his interview aired the next evening – Cinder’s face superimposed on an older, cleaner District Twelve scene with Panem flags flying proud behind him; _Cinder Foquismo, Father of Tribute’s Fetus_ in square white letters – the face of Magdalen’s support had been edited to broadcast to all of Panem:

“I know Magdalen has what it takes to win, if it weren’t for the baby.”

↘

Barm handily deposited Peeta through the door of the tailor’s shop and Peeta, as he was pretending not to have any bones to make it harder for Barm to carry him, slid to the floor with a thump.

“Hey, Peeta,” Cinder said cautiously, “What’s wrong?”

Peeta crossed his arms and turned his head resolutely to the wall.

Cinder looked over at Barm. Barm looked apologetic – but only just – and shook his head, backing out the door.

“Peeta?” Cinder asked, walking over and crouching down beside the little boy, “What’s going on?”

Peeta huffed dramatically, re-crossing his arms and shaking his head until his blond hair was a riot of pale sticks around his red face.

“Did I do something?” Cinder asked, putting his hand on Peeta’s back. “I can’t deal with you being angry at me right now, okay, Peeta? It’s not funny. Things aren’t good right now.” 

Peeta’s face screwed up and he glared at Cinder with all of the fury a five-year-old brewing a monster tantrum could manage. “You said Magdalen is going to lose.”

Cinder’s face fell further and he sank back onto his haunches on the floor. 

“No, I didn’t,” he said, sounding exhausted. “I said – it doesn’t matter what I said, but I didn’t say that.”

“I saw it, dammit,” Peeta growled, and Cinder didn’t even bother admonishing him. He _was_ damned, and he’d damned Magdalen and the baby on his way down to hell. “You said she could win if it weren’t for the baby.”

“Peeta,” Cinder sighed around the lump in his throat, “What did I tell you always to remember? What did I tell you about Panem?”

Peeta just scowled.

“It’s built on lies, Peeta,” Cinder said. “I did not say that Magdalen would lose because of the baby. But they can make it look like you said or did whatever they want.”

“Why do they want Magdalen to lose, then?” Peeta asked. His brow smoothed out and his blue eyes flickered open again in their usual Mellark bleeding-heart softness as he looked at the etched lines of utter despair on Cinder’s face. Peeta clambered into Cinder’s lap again, patting Cinder’s arm encouragingly.

“Because you were right after all, Peeta,” Cinder said, watching the dull hum of tense silence beaming onto his videoscreen from the Capitol. “They don’t give babies to kids. And you’re a kid if you’re in the Reaping.”

Peeta nodded. “I did warn you that.”

Cinder coughed a single wry laugh. “That you did, Peeta. You did warn me.”

Peeta was quiet for a long time, watching Girl Four stalk Boy Six through the underbrush far away.

“Are we gonna paint today?” he asked finally. 

“You can paint. I don’t want to,” Cinder said.

Peeta frowned. “No. You gotta. It’ll make you feel better. Whenever I… run into the door, I paint how I feel about it, and then I feel better. You can do that, too.” 

Cinder smiled for what felt like the first time in five and a half weeks, and smoothed an affectionate hand through Peeta’s soft blond curls – pulling free a mysterious clump of paste, which Peeta deftly explained away with a low scowl and a ‘Gale’ – before going over to his easel. He painted Magdalen and a little dark-haired baby with green eyes playing in the surf of District Four, Tully and his sister somewhere off in the distance, floating on the waves.

Peeta ended up with a smear of green across his forehead as the sun set outside with a bitter red harshness coming off the smog of the mines.

“I don’t think Barm’s coming,” Peeta said nervously when the sky outside had burned through to a crystal-clear night blue. “My mother probably told him he had to work more harder today. She was really mad this morning ‘cause his boots are missing and they cost a lot of money.”

Cinder didn’t say that he knew where those boots had gone. Magdalen was the only Tribute with a bedroll.

“I’ll walk you home, Peeta,” Cinder said, standing and stretching and setting his painting along the windowsill to dry. “It’s cold tonight. Winter’s coming, I think. Get your coat.”

“I don’t have a coat,” Peeta shrugged, shaking his head. “I got too big for it.”

“I’ll make you one,” Cinder promised, putting his hand on the back of Peeta’s head to lead him out the door. Peeta kicked a little white stone back and forth between his feet as they headed into the center of the Merchant quarters, near the square where Twelve branched out from the merchant quarter to the mines in the east, the Seam to the west, and the empty expanse towards Eleven in the south.

The huge videoscreen outside the Justice Building was full of Magdalen’s ashen face. 

“ _Cinna_ ,” whimpered Peeta, tugging on his hand and pointing. 

Cinder felt time stretch around him like coils, pulling out taut and stopping, suspended, crystallized, as the District Six boy kicked out and Magdalen stumbled back, letting the arrow fly.

His foot connected with her belly and Magdalen doubled over. Her arrow bit into the boy’s shoulder and he jerked back, gnashing his yellow teeth, before kicking out again, connecting over and over as Magdalen crumpled and cried out, arms and bent legs trying to protect the twenty-fifth Tribute.

And then the dark, velvety-green bushes rustled and the big girl from District Four streaked out, sword drawn and pointed at the throat of the rampaging boy. Magdalen’s arrow still stuck out of his shoulder.

“Leave her alone,” growled the District Four girl. “Fight like a real man if you’re gonna fight at all.”

The orange-skinned, yellow-toothed boy bared his fangs and pulled a long, notched knife out of his boot. Then he turned tail like the coward he was, and he ran away into the forest, loud and crashing through the trees.

The girl from Four looked down at Magdalen. “I hope you’re okay,” she said softly. “Even if it does mean we have to kill each other later.”

And then she took off, leaving Magdalen alone in the soft moss under the darkening sky, caught between blue and violet and gray and bright with white slices of stars.

Cinder didn’t know how, but his fingers had found the shape of Magdalen’s face on the huge screen and he traced over her cheek.

“Come on, pipit,” he whispered. “Get up.”

The cameras in the capitol broke into a split-screen, with the Four girl chasing the Six boy across the jungle on one side, trailing them close like the audience was a part of the chase, and the other pulling back high and filming Magdalen from overhead, a tiny dark dot on the moon-soaked green carpet of the jungle floor.

Cinna felt the stretch of time break and fly forward at breakneck speed when he realized, as Magdalen did in front of him, thousands of miles away, that the dark spot was spreading.

Magdalen whimpered – just once, just softly – as she rolled onto her back and pushed herself up to sit. Her blue uniform pants were soaked in blood, and the spongy moss beneath her was black.

The light went out in her eyes.

“No,” Cinder whispered, his hand pressed to the screen, “No, no, no, get up. Get up, pipit, it’s – it’ll be okay, you’ve got to get up.”

Magdalen collapsed onto her back in the soft moss, the spade-shaped leaves of the trees casting dark geometric shadows over her face in the starlight. She pressed her hands over the mound of her belly, fingers soft and spreading, just touching and feeling as the pool of black beneath her on the moss spread.

“It’s okay, pipit,” Cinna murmured, his heart in his throat, “Just get up and come home, we can make another, we can make so many, just come home, just come home to me.”

Magdalen drew in a shaky breath as she looked up at the pricks of starlight that reflected back in her glassy gray eyes. “You never even got to feel her kick,” she whispered, mouth barely moving.

Cinder choked on nothing and closed his eyes, slamming his knuckles against the frame of the screen. “Get up!”

Magdalen smiled sadly and closed her eyes, her arms wrapped around herself like a hug. “We’ll never need tesserae. You were right.”

“Get up!” Cinder roared, hitting the side of the screen again as time rushed around him like a roaring of color and black in his ears, the square too full of watchful, pitying eyes and no one _doing_ anything. 

Cinder collapsed in front of the screen, the rubbed-raw heels of his hands pressed to his temples. He wanted to shut his eyes, to drown it out, he did not want – could not bear – to watch this, but he knew, he knew, that it was the only thing he could still do for Magdalen.

She didn’t move. She didn’t cry, or scream, or writhe.

All she did was bleed.

Cinder felt hollow when the cannon blasted, so far away, and Magdalen’s face shone across the stars in the Arena. 

President Snow’s face filled the hundred screens around the square and Cinder felt like he was _everywhere_ , pressing up against all of his organs and making everything reek of blood and roses.

“Well,” he said imperiously as Claudius Templesmith simpered in another quadrant of the split-screen, the girl from Four chased the boy from Six through the jungle in a third, and Magdalen bled out over and over and over and over in the last, “Of course there will be those who pity Magdalen Glass and her unborn child. There will be those who may be persuaded to think she should have been exempt from these Hunger Games. But those people should bear in mind: these Hunger Games are the consequences of bad acts. 

“Magdalen Glass acted against the laws of the Capitol when she conceived without a license. She continued her abysmal amorality by refusing to wed under Capitol sanction, claiming the barbaric District Twelve traditions enacted by her peers constituted binding marriage. They do not. Magdalen Glass was misled by the ineptitude of the Districts and for that continued irresponsibility and lack of respect for the laws of the Capitol, Magdalen Glass and her bastard child paid an appropriate price. 

“Do not forget the purpose of these Hunger Games. Those who commit crimes against the Capitol will serve their penance.”

The dusty square of District Twelve thundered with silence. Cinder felt the gap of people around him widening, opening him up to the wolves’ mouths up on the screens from the Capitol, grinning white foaming maws discussing the end of his world as though it were the weather.

Little Peeta Mellark laid his hand on Cinder’s shoulder.

↘

The tailor shop was closed.

↘

Winter came, and Barmbrack Mellark had no boots. His littlest brother made do without a coat.

Two coffins returned to District Four. Three wound their way across Panem to Twelve and were unloaded into the town square under a blinding snowfall. They were buried a day later in coal-hard ground full of white Capitol coffins in neat, small rows.

↘

Icy water hit Cinder’s face like shards of rock. He jerked and spluttered. The back of his head hit the brick wall of the Hob and he saw stars, cursing, before letting his eyes drift shut again. He could smell the sticky vomit stink that had become omnipresent over the last two months.

“Get up,” snarled Haymitch Abernathy, rearing the bucket to douse Cinder again. “Cripes’ sake, Cinder, you’re embarrassing yourself and you’re embarrassing your wife and kid.”

Cinder mopped his sopping hair out of his eyes. “What the hell would you know about it?”

Haymitch’s jaw ticked. “You really think I live up in that infernal mansion by myself because I want to? The world isn’t all about _your_ pain, sweetheart.”

Cinder squinted up at the lopsided silhouette. “Yeah, last I checked, you _came home_.”

Haymitch threw the rest of the water at Cinder’s face. “You think that’s better?” He shook his head. “When you’re ready to pull your fat merchy head out of your ass, you should come by my dee-luxe mansion on the hill. Five o’clock today sounds like a good time for you to get over yourself.” 

“Fuck off, Haymitch,” Cinder groaned, leaning back against the wall again. 

“She never gave up like this,” Haymitch scoffed, taking up his bucket and his bottles and turning to walk away. “She would have set herself on fire to get back to you. Frankly… I don’t see the appeal.”

Cinder didn’t answer. He turned and looked out across the snowscape at the divide of Twelve, from the Hob up into the square and across into merchant quarters. School was letting out, a burst of little blond kids and dark Seam kids fanning out away from each other. Tate, the undertaker’s son, in a thick gray wool coat, seemed to be forcing Peeta to eat a rock.

Cinder sighed and closed his eyes. He needed to go home and change his clothes and bathe. 

The stench was starting to get to him. 

Come five o’clock, the low winter sky was already a woolly sort of blue-gray-green and Cinder Foquismo made his first-ever trek up to the Victor’s Village. There were ten houses, the District minimum, and nine stood empty. Six had never been filled. The tenth had a huge, broken pen for geese in the side-yard, empty in all this cold. 

Cinder knocked on the peeling door. 

Haymitch swung it open, creaking on its hinges. “Oh, Beetee, come on in.”

Cinder heard the grinding of something like screws in the wall. His head still hovered in that half-drunken dreamspace where everything hurt and nothing made sense and his first thought was _goose attack_ and his second was _the house is falling down_.

“Who’s Beetee?” he asked instead, stepping over the threshold. The house was disgusting, even by Cinder’s standards of late. Haymitch Abernathy turned six locks down the length of the door.

“Half an hour of freedom, that’s who Beetee is,” Haymitch snuffed. “And that’s not a lot of time, so sit down and listen, sweetheart. This isn’t about you.”

There was a soft commotion and Marjorae Undersee, tiny little Madge trailing with her hands fisted in her mother’s skirt, bustled into Haymitch Abernathy’s rathole of a living room, tea tray in hand.

“Hello, Cinder,” she said kindly, handing him a steaming mug of tea. She disentangled Madge from her skirts and settled her down in a clear spot on the floor. Madge peered up at Cinder timidly from under her froth of white-blonde curls and scooted over to clasp onto his knee.

“I am so sorry about Magdalen and the baby,” Marjorae said, smoothing her palm over his face. “Did you already have a name for him?”

Cinder looked down. “Brattice.”

“That’s a terrible name for a boy,” grunted Haymitch, scowling at his tea. “Now, look, we’ve got twenty-eight minutes. Cinder, what wouldn’t you do to bring Magdalen back?”

Cinder’s green eyes blazed. “There is absolutely nothing I wouldn’t do.”

“Well, you can’t bring her back. But you could stop someone else from losing their Magdalen.” Haymitch leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “How would you feel about becoming a spy?”

Cinder looked from Haymitch, the town drunk, to Marjorae Undersee, the delicate wife of the District mayor. “What are you talking about?”

“When I was sixteen,” Marjorae began, petting Madge’s hair lovingly, “My twin sister, Maysilee, was Reaped into the Quarter Quell.”

“With him,” Cinder clarified, nodding towards Haymitch.

“With me,” Haymitch said. “I couldn’t save her. I tried.”

“Yeah, your track record with saving girls from Twelve isn’t great,” Cinder said. Haymitch Abernathy’s face darkened and he pulled a fist, but Marjorae Undersee gently still him with a hand on his elbow.

“He tried,” Marjorae said. “He always tries. But Maysilee died. Haymitch won by exposing a flaw in the Gamemakers’ design – ”

“That axe,” Cinder said.

“Right,” Marjorae said. “The axe. Cinder, two weeks later…” she trailed off, looking over to Haymitch.

“Two weeks later, my whole family and my Magdalen were dead,” Haymitch all but growled. “Her name was Scarlet. I had a ring in my pocket when they had me identify her body. There wasn’t really enough left of her to be sure, though.”

Cinder looked at his hands and took a long drag of hot tea. “I didn’t know.”

“Never told you.” Haymitch shrugged. 

Marjorae laid a hand over Haymitch’s scarred wrist and a hand over Cinder’s pale hand. “Cinder… it isn’t enough to try to bring home one survivor a year. We need to stop the Hunger Games altogether. And you can be a huge asset, if you’re interested.”

“Think about it, sweetheart,” Haymitch said, scratching his chin. “Little Brattice would have been in the Reaping ball for the next Quarter Quell. You really wanna live in a world like that? You want to live in a world where Peeta Mellark could get sent to die just because his mother’s a selfish bitch?”

Cinder looked down at Madge Undersee’s wide blue eyes, staring up at him from his knee. “What do you need me for?”

“You’re young, you’re not a Victor, and you can design clothes,” Haymitch said, leaning back. “How would you feel about styling for the Games?”

Cinder’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me? Firstly, why the criminy would I want to have _anything_ to do with – Secondly, there’s no way they’re going to just let me migrate to the Capitol. No one from Twelve ever gets a Priority rating, it’s not gonna happen.”

“We can get you to the Capitol with somewhere to live and a spot in the design school in a month, for the new semester,” Haymitch said dryly. 

Cinder swallowed. “What would you want me to do? Bomb the design school? Kill the Gamemakers?”

Haymitch laughed uproariously, slapping his knee. Madge Undersee pressed her face into the side of Cinder’s knee and Marjorae looked reproachful.

“Ah, sweetheart, you don’t have the face for killing,” Haymitch snorted, wiping his eyes. “No, no, no… what we want you to do is design for the Games. Do a helluva job. Get promoted. Schmooze. If you can get invited to a few of Snow’s parties, all the better. Get your own District. Not a Career. Twelve. Eleven. Five. Eight.”

“And then what?”

Marjorae’s eyes gleamed. “Hopefully by then… all we’ll need is a spark.”

“I don’t know what you think a costume can really do,” Cinder said. Then he thought of the immediate way Inby’s tear-streaks painted him as weak, how Magdalen’s Capitol costume – or lack of one – was just fodder for Snow to push his campaign against unlicensed conception. He nodded slowly. “No… I’ll do it. How do I get out of Twelve?”

“Cinder,” Marjorae said gently, plucking Madge from the floor and settling her on her lap, “Once you leave, you can never come back. You can’t speak to anyone from the District. Don’t even show any interest in any news from Twelve until we give you a signal. Are you really and truly willing to give everyone up?”

Barm’s easy smile and his mother’s intricate quilt and Peeta’s sincere, questioning eyes ran through Cinder’s mind, but they were chased down and drowned out by Magdalen’s smile, Magdalen’s laugh, the weight of Magdalen’s hair in his hands, the softness of her skin, the miraculous little kicks he never got to feel.

“Yes,” Cinder said softly. “What’s the signal?”

Haymitch shook his head. “First things first. You’re gonna be in the Capitol for at least a decade before they promote you up to head designer. Let’s face it, you’re a rube from Twelve and you’re not anywhere near their level yet. But you will be.” He almost smiled. “You’re not all bad at designing. I saw Magdalen’s bird wedding gown. It was… a thing.”

Cinder’s brow furrowed. “Thanks?”

“You know who Plutarch Heavensbee is?” asked Haymitch.

Cinder nodded. “Isn’t he that new Gamemaker? He commissioned the chimerae or something, didn’t he?”

Marjorae nodded. “He’s from District Thirteen.”

There was a long pause.

“Yeah, there’s a Thirteen,” Haymitch said, turning his cup over and looking disappointed that there was no more tea. “Plutarch, and two of the Victors from Three are forging your papers. Plutarch’s got a niece in the Capitol who’s sympathetic to the cause. You’re gonna stay with her.”

“I’m married,” Cinder said softly, knee-jerk and stinging.

“You don’t have to do her,” Haymitch snorted. Marjorae looked disapproving. “She’s your design partner, your roommate, your assistant, whatever cover works best. If you actually get along, great. If not, fake it. Her name’s Portia and she’s got a room for you and you’re going to take it.”

“What’s the ‘cause’?” Cinder asked, his throat dry. “That she’s sympathetic to?”

Marjorae’s sweet face hardened. “Taking down the Capitol.”

“Uniting the Districts,” said Haymitch, his dark eyes sliding a look her way. “That’s what has to happen first. 

“And that,” he said, “Is where you can help. I can’t talk to you once you’re in the Capitol, but there are a few Victors who mentor or live out there that Plutarch’s going to get you in touch with. Beetee, Wiress, and Wattson from Three are essential. Mags from Four – that’s where Plutarch’s going to try to get you and Portia placed for your apprenticeships, Four – and Chaff from Eleven. _If Plutarch doesn’t tell you someone’s safe to talk to, then you cannot talk to them about the cause_.”

Cinder nodded tersely. Marjorae poured fresh, hot tea into his mug, touching it with warmth, and Haymitch downed a second cup with the same spiteful fervor as he had the first.

“Why me?” Cinder asked finally, looking up. “There are lots of young people who can design, probably better than I can. And Plutarch’s niece – Portia? – why not just use her?”

“What’s the cause?” asked Haymitch roughly.

“Uniting the Districts,” repeated Cinder.

Marjorae looked up with a sad, sweet smile and ran her hand through her daughter’s cloud of pale hair. “That’s what Magdalen did… you’d be continuing her legacy. I thought it might be something you would appreciate more than most.”

Cinder looked into the depths of his tea, murky with the remnants of black leaves. “I’ll do it.” He met Haymitch’s eyes. “I’ll go to the Capitol.”

Haymitch Abernathy nodded. His gray Seam eyes shone with something like respect. “You’re the right man for it, Cinder Foquismo. I’ll let Plutarch and Mags know you’re in. You’ve got one month to figure out the tailor shop, kid. Take care of your mom.”

Cinder swallowed. “The kids from District Four – their family…”

“Mags is watching out for them,” Marjorae said gently. 

“Don’t sugarcoat it, Jorie,” snorted Haymitch. He looked to Cinder with his jaw set. “There was a so-called accident out at sea the day after they sent that fish to Magdalen. The parents are dead, the Tributes’ brother was sent to live with an aunt and uncle somewhere else in the District. He’s turning thirteen… if he’s not Reaped this year, and he might not be ‘cause it’d look suspicious, my guess is he’ll go when he’s fourteen. _If_ you can pull it off at the design school, you might be styling him.”

“If he’s turning thirteen, then that boy Tribute was – ”

“Twins,” said Marjorae, her voice tight and high. She smoothed her hands compulsively through Madge’s hair again. Her eyes were wet and bright. “They seem to like doing that.”

Cinder looked over to her and gently laid his hand over hers. “I’m sorry.”

Marjorae shook her head and smiled. “It was a long time ago. Now, the signal – Madge,” she turned to look down at her tiny daughter, “Do you want to give it to Cinder now?”

Madge nodded and Marjorae kissed her head. She unfastened a little gold badge from the front of Madge’s dress and Madge took it in her chubby fingers. 

She handed it solemnly to Cinder. “This is a mockingjay. My momma has one and my Aunt Mayzee had one. They’re birds that tricked the Capitol.”

_Just like Magdalen._

“Will you remember what you’re looking for?” Marjorae asked urgently as the screws began to turn in the walls again and Haymitch mimed wildly, _wrap it up_.

“Absolutely,” Cinder said firmly, folding the badge into the palm of his hand and tucking it into his pocket. He stood to go and Marjorae followed, kissing his cheek.

Haymitch Abernathy followed him to the front door. Cinder stuck his hand out to take and Haymitch didn’t take it.

But he did lean in, reeking of white liquor, and mutter, “She could’ve won. I hope you know that.” He pulled back. “Now, get outta my house.”

Cinder kept his hand clutched around the badge as he walked down the long road between the Victor’s Village and the merchant quarters. The back of his mind sang, _this could have been where you lived. You and Magdalen and the baby._ He kept right on walking past the tailor shop and turned at the fork in the road, following the warm scent of bread up to the Mellark bakery.

“Oh,” said Mahra Mellark once the door had opened. “It’s you. I thought it might be a paying customer.”

“Lovely to see you, too, Mrs. Mellark,” said Cinder with a wry twist of his lips. 

Mahra sniffed. “Barm!” she yelled over her shoulder. “It’s your boyfriend.”

“Actually, I’m here to see Peeta,” Cinder said shortly.

“Never mind,” Mahra yelled over her shoulder again. “Peeta! Get down here!”

There was a commotion above and then Peeta came stomping down the stairs. His sleeves were too short and his hems were too short and he had a brilliantly violet shiner ringing one eye.

“Cinna!” he cried in some surprise when he reached the landing, “What are you doing here?” He glanced up nervously to where Cinder was glaring at Mahra and Mahra stared coolly back, one eyebrow arched.

Cinder crouched down to look Peeta in the eyes. “Well, I came by to see if you wanted to come over tomorrow and paint. I’ve still got your canvas set up, if you’d like. And… it looks like you still need a coat?”

Peeta beamed. “I’ll come tomorrow after school. I can walk there by myself now.”

“And who’s going to ice the cookies if you go fiddle away?” asked Mahra sharply, gripping Peeta’s shoulder.

Cinder looked up at her darkly. “You can ice cookies beautifully. How about you?” He smiled at Peeta. “I’ll come by the school and get you at the end of the day, okay?”

Peeta smiled and bounced on his heels. “Okay!”

Mahra squeezed his shoulder. “Set the table, Peeta.”

Peeta nodded quickly, but Cinder grabbed his arm. 

“Hey, Peeta… looks like your eye’s pretty bad there. Do you need me to take care of the doors? I can probably get a Peacekeeper to fix the hinges if you want.” 

He raised his eyebrow.

Peeta shuffled his feet nervously and looked from Cinder to his mother and back again. “I don’t – know. I’m trying to be less clumsy like you said.” He glanced at Mahra again. “I’m gonna set the table.”

Peeta ran off and Mahra glared at Cinder. “I don’t appreciate threats.”

“I don’t appreciate Peeta being bruised up worse every time I see him. He’s a good kid, Mrs. Mellark. And you’re lucky to have him,” Cinder’s voice cracked once and he coughed. “You’re lucky to have him.”

She looked unimpressed. “Next time you want to criticize my parenting, make sure you’re actually licensed to be a parent, Cinder. And maybe choose someone who wasn’t just trying to get rich quick and get out of the Reaping. Might work out a little better for you.”

She shut the door in his face.

When Cinder picked Peeta up at the school the next afternoon, the little boy wrapped his hand around Cinder’s fingers and galloped happily every few steps along the road, chattering about Katniss Everdeen and how he could write his name now and write K for Katniss and how he was the best of his brothers at icing flowers, because he took painting classes and Lavash and Barm never did and he’d really missed Cinder. And he really missed Magdalen.

Cinder smiled and patted Peeta’s head.

For the next four long weeks, Cinder Foquismo gathered Peeta at the end of school each day and Peeta chattered happily as he painted – Cinder teaching him slowly, day by day, about shading and proportion and scale and chiaroscuro and color theory – and Cinder sat in the corner, stitching Peeta a coat several winters too big. He used thick, woven wool in a nice sort of charcoal gray, a color that wouldn’t catch the eye of thieves in the cubbies at school on first blush at least, and lined it with heavy rabbit fur. He trimmed the inside of the cuffs with clean, smooth white linen. Nice things were hard to come by in District Twelve, and this might be the only beautiful thing Peeta ever owned.

It was the least he could do.

On the night before he would be leaving, the sole passenger from this far East to be getting a seat on one of the tessera trains on its way back to the Capitol, Cinder packaged all of his paints and boxed them up for Peeta to take home.

“Don’t you want them anymore?” Peeta asked in astonishment, his blue eyes round and shining. “You’re so good at painting and paints cost so much money.”

“It’s okay,” Cinder said, smiling. “You’re good at painting, too, Peeta. I hope you keep it up.”

“Of course I will,” Peeta said earnestly. “I like coming here and painting with you.”

Cinder crouched down to meet the line of Peeta’s eyes. “Peeta… you’re not going to see me anymore. I won’t be here tomorrow. Or the next day, or the next. I’m… going away.”

Peeta frowned. “Like Magdalen?” His eyes welled with tears.

“No.” Cinder made a sound not quite a laugh and not quite a soft sob. “No, Peeta, not like Magdalen. I’m just... I’m going to live somewhere else, okay? And we won’t see each other anymore.”

Peeta’s eyes were wet. “For how long?”

Cinder patted Peeta’s hair consolingly. “Not ever, Peeta. You’re never going to see me again, okay? And – and if you _do_ ,” he said, because in Panem, there was always the chance. Peeta might get Reaped some day, and Cinder might have to smile and style him for his death, “And if you do see me, ever, ever again… you can’t talk to me. You have to pretend you don’t know me, okay?”

Peeta’s face twisted into a little mask of grief. “I thought you and me and Magdalen were friends, and she told me that I could be big brothers with the baby, and then you said she could be out of a Reaping, and now she’s gone and there’s no baby and you’re leaving, too.” Peeta looked up so sadly that Cinder had to blink against the prickling in his own eyes. “Why does everybody leave me?”

Cinder swallowed and folded the beautiful new coat around Peeta’s shoulders. It was long enough that it would fit him for at least three winters, unless he grew quickly, and there were hidden seams inside to be let out for another year or two after that. 

“Because the Capitol is a bad place, Peeta,” he said softly. “And it takes good people away. But someday… maybe it doesn’t have to be like that, okay? And District Twelve can be a good place. There are still people who love you here.”

Peeta looked down at his feet.

Cinder swallowed again and went over to Peeta’s little canvas, finally taking the completed painting down from his little easel and wrapping it carefully in paper so Peeta could carry it home. It was a lovely little childhood painting, simple and fanciful and bright: Katniss Everdeen with her dark Seam braids and a vermilion red dress, standing in a circle of sunlight like fire, surrounded by black-and-white birds.

“Don’t forget your painting, Peeta,” Cinder said kindly, tying it off with twine. “It’s a good thing Barm’s coming by to help you carry all of this home, huh?”

Peeta didn’t say a word. Just looked at his feet. 

When Barm arrived to walk Peeta home, he shook Cinder’s hand solemnly. 

“I’ll take better care of Peeta,” he promised lowly. “With – you know. My mother.”

Cinder nodded. “Take care of yourself, too.”

Barm smiled, easy as always. He clapped Cinder’s shoulder and pulled him in for a hug. “I always do.”

He picked up the palette box and Peeta’s paper-wrapped painting and waited outside the door. 

Cinder turned to Peeta and looked down at him gently. “I’m really going to miss you, Peeta.” 

“I’m very mad at you.” 

Peeta’s voice was tiny and broken and lacked any form of malice. He sounded like a five-year-old boy who had lost his best friend. Cinder looked back and Peeta’s lip poked out in a pout, huge blue eyes dry and serious as he stared up at him from beneath his mussed blond curls.

“I know,” Cinder said, nodding. “I am, too.”

Peeta’s scowl broke and he rushed forward, throwing his arms around Cinder’s waist. 

Cinder smiled sadly and patted Peeta’s back. “Be happy, Peeta. Just grow up happy, okay? And take better care of Katniss than I did of Magdalen.”

↘

Fourteen months later, President Snow smiled, satisfied, as he toured the workshop of the design school. Beside him, Seneca Crane looked disinterested, and behind him, Plutarch Heavensbee barely lifted his head from his com. But Snow liked the design school. So much spectacle, so much hard work. It was the most visible glorification the Capitol had.

Everyone wanted to look Capitol.

He stopped by a particularly striking design; peacock feathers and draping long tails of silk and velvet, shimmering with bits of glass like frost on a rooftop.

“And whose is this?” he asked indulgently, looking to the group of students along the wall.

“Ours, sir,” said a petite, pretty girl with long jet black hair, cut in a sharp angle across her face. She smiled at Plutarch. “Hello, Uncle. It’s so nice to see you.”

Plutarch looked up from his com at last. “Portia! What a surprise. Is this really yours?” He reached out and lifted one of the draping sleeves. “Very nice work.”

“Thank you,” Portia said, grinning. “It was a truly collaborative effort. I prefer the design architecture to the actual piecework, really.”

“So who actually made the garment?” Snow asked, looking down the row. “Good work deserves just rewards, of course.”

The slender, good-looking boy beside Portia stepped forward, his head inclined respectfully. He had short, brown hair and a clean sort of look about him, very scrubbed and healthy. “I did, sir.”

“You have a bright future,” Snow said pleasantly. “How would you feel about working with us one day?”

“It would be an honor to play a role in the future of the Hunger Games,” said the boy softly. His voice had a curious timbre – almost a drawl to his words.

President Snow stepped closer and narrowed his eyes. “What’s your name?”

The boy looked up. He had finely chiseled cheekbones and pale skin, unadorned with tattoos or implants. His green eyes, daintily touched with gold liner, were mild. 

Cinder Foquismo looked up at President Snow with a calm, polite smile. “Cinna, sir. Just ‘Cinna.’”

* * *

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